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I've been battling my damn computer. Tried 2 different video card... radeon 8500 and 9000. Tried 3 sets of drivers... And it still kicks me out of a game back to the desktop. I cannot for the life of me figure out why its doing this... If i swap drivers its fine for a few days then goes bezerk and i can't play anything. Reboots don't help tried different via drivers also.. Just about ready to reformat and reload its getting old. I'd like to fire up a game and play without having it kick me back to the desktop. The game doesn't close its just like i alt tabbed out of it but i don't... does it to all games too so its not a isolated incident that could be blamed on OpenGL or D3D anyone have anything i should try?

Predator i use to have the same symptoms on my computer, its because your AGP slot is at high bus speed and your video card cant handle it. I had amd xp 1600 at 1.75ghz when i had it at that speed games would kick me out and exit to my desktop. What i did i downloaded powerstrip and lower the MHZ of core and ram speed on the video card to like 20mhz or 30mhz below default. This worked for awhile but since i got tired of crashing of games i just went back to 1.7ghz and the games now play normal and i dont get kicked out of my games anymore.

Cheers
hope this helps


David

PreDatoR ,

FearFox is on the right track. You have several possibilities.

1. Some system files have been corrputed- Reinstall winblows.
2. Your overclock of you video card or system are too high- Lower clock
3. Your power supply is dropping in voltage during high load periods (i.e. Brown outs).

Your cpu may need to have the thermalpaste reapplied.

If you have a spare HD you can try and install winblows on in and check to see if you games run with a fresh install. Good luck.

The FIRST thing you should do when having a problem like this is set your CPU and video clocks to normal. You're just chasing your tail if you don't eliminate that possibility first-off.

This is EXACTLY the stability problems you get when overclocking.

If that fixes it but you still want to overclock then you leave the vid card on normal speed and GRADUALLY overclock your CPU until you find the right stability point (could take months). And THEN start overclocking the vid card if you want.

Your bios might also have a voltage ajustment for your agp slot, if so, press the Gas on it.

Greg

I don't overclock my video card so i'll mark that one as out of the question. The CPU temps are fine. I've dropped down from 1.9 gig to 1.75 which is 166 FSB so all the AGP PCI speeds are in spec and its still doing it. I'm leaning towards a reinstall of winblows... This install has been through 5 motherboard swaps so i'm sure something is hosed up... Its just such a pain in the ass to save all the stuff i need to save and reformat though I know the PSU is doing fine its a 480W Antec TrueBlue and the voltages are fine and stable. Been the most stable PSU i've ever owned. And i wish this board u could adjust the AGP voltage on but unfortunately i can't

This a WinXP system? Have you EVER run the Repair option after booting from the XP CD, or just swapped the mobo and let it figure it out for itself?

Before wiping the drive I'd try the repair option first. Might fix it. You'll probably need to re-install the Service Pack afterwards though - pretty sure that repair will negate all Service Packs.

You really need to run a repair after a mobo swap (it's the equivalent of wiping the Device Manager in 98 and re-installing it).

Ya its XP Pro and i've done the repair thing each time i installed a different motherboard. It could use a clean install... Guess i'll have to do that when i get some time.

I dunno, whenever mine does that, it's because i hit the Windows button isntead of ctrl or alt. :aha

why not bring it down to stock and see if it works? Couldnt hurt then u'd know if that is it...

I don't know what kind of sound card you have, but I had the same problem with win98. I narrowed it down to the Creative Lab's Sound Blaster because when I pulled the card out, all my games worked without booting me back to the desktop. I even moved the card around the slots, but I could never get it to work until I replaced the pos Sound Blaster with a Turtle Beach.

I don't know what going on but at 1.75 Gig 166fsb its now working... sometimes a reboot clears it up other times i don't... its getting a format this weekend its past due with all the motherboard changes i've done. Sound card is a Herc GTXP so i don't think that is the problem but who knows with pc's

g'luck with the reformat!!

look at it this way, by doing so you'll be able to clear up some space by getting rid of files you never used or that were simply taking up space. you'll also have everything up-to-date in terms of drivers, patches, etc.

turn down your AGP arperture in the BIOS: it worked for me

turn down your AGP arperture in the BIOS: it worked for me

I would not recommend setting AGP Aperature lower than 64 Mb (the default). That usually causes lockups in games.